If you are eating to gain muscle mass, as a body builder, you need a clean and healthy diet.  It’s not always easy to eat such a diet and junk food can call to you all day long.  In fact, being overwhelmed by fast food diets makes it more difficult than ever to stick to a healthy diet.  People these days don’t want to take the time to cook a square meal and it’s just too easy to chow down on a burger from a fast food restaurant.  There are consequences to doing this, though, and it will not help you in your quest toward eating to gain muscle mass.

The best diet for eating to gain muscle mass is one that is high in protein and low in junk food.  Junk food often contains too high levels of salt, sugar and fat. When eating to gain muscle mass, you need to eat for performance rather than pleasure.  This means that you are always thinking about what the food will do to boost muscle mass and to increase your performance capabilities.  The food must be bursting with energy, charging your body for a full workout.
You need to plan ahead and know what you’ll be eating every day when you are eating to gain muscle mass.  Know about how many calories you need to eat in order to gain the weight you need to gain and you need to know how many grams of protein, carbohydrates and quality fat you need to eat in one day.

Proteins are the building blocks of muscle so your diet should contain as much healthy proteins as possible.  This means you eat meat, dairy, eggs, nuts and beans.  This needs to be balanced with some carbs.  Carbs come from grains, fruits and vegetables.  Bad carbs and fat come from processed foods which are high in sugar and saturated fats.  Healthy fats come primarily from fish that contain omega 3 fatty acids, which are good for you.  When you are eating to gain muscle mass, you should have more protein than carbohydrates and more carbohydrates than fat in your diet.

You should keep a diary or record of what you eat, including the amount you ate of each food when you’re eating to gain muscle.  If possible, get a rough estimate of the calories you ate using a calorie book.  When you use a calorie book, you can really begin to understand the numbers of calories in certain foods, including junk foods, and some books also include fat content and protein content of the food.  This way you’ll know if you are eating to gain muscle or if you have fallen off the wagon and slipped in your attempt to gain muscle mass.

It also helps when eating to gain muscle to keep a daily checklist of your goals.  It could be something like “I want to eat at least 200 grams of protein each day and drink a gallon of water each day.”  Check off when you’ve done these things.  You can also have as your goal that you will eat two or more tablespoons of flax seed oil per day, the perfect supplement to your post-workout experience.  You can also set, in your checklist, the timing of your workouts and eating so that you don’t cheat and eat junk food when you shouldn’t.  You might not finish everything you need to do on your checklist but you can easily get more of these things checked off than not, making it a successful day.

Plan to eat as diversely as possible on your new eating plan.   When you are eating to gain muscle mass, you need to plan to eat over the long haul.  This means that meals shouldn’t be repetitive and boring.  Think of different spices which might work for you and be creative around the stuff you put in salads and on your baked potato.  You don’t have to deal with boring chicken breasts and brown rice for every meal.  Add interesting vegetables to the mix that don’t add a lot of calories but provide you with healthy nutrients instead.

When eating to gain muscle, you shouldn’t go longer than three hours without a meal.  If you go too long, you will put your body in a catabolic state and your body will chew up your muscle for food.  Keep your body in an anabolic state, constantly building ripped and chiseled muscle mass using the food you’ve been eating to gain muscle.  You can use a meal replacement drink or protein drink along with some fruit if you really don’t have the time for a meal.  You just need to keep giving your body some fuel in which to build muscle mass.